


when my heart was still mine

by Tinwoman



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Episode Related, Gen, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Spoilers C2:E69, episode 69 (nice), had to do SOMETHING to work that episode out of my system right lads???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 08:24:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19437640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tinwoman/pseuds/Tinwoman
Summary: In the end, Yasha remembers Orphanmaker(it’s not the fall that kills you)





	when my heart was still mine

The temple, like so many things here in Xhorhas, is familiar and not-familiar all at once. Yasha is fairly certain she hasn’t been here before — it’s nothing like her tribal lands, nor is like anywhere the circus would’ve gone — but this place tugging at the edges of her memory all the same. A feeling, opaque and intangible as smoke, that permeates every breath she draws here, growing stronger the further down they go.

_Perhaps not here, exactly, but somewhere similar?_

The angels stop her in her tracks. Frozen in place, weeping blood as fresh as her own, and even before Caduceus whispers about the faint trace of undead aura, Yasha is breathing sharp and shallow to keep herself still. More of that same push-pull feeling, the angelic and the profane, repulsion and fascination tangled viciously together in the pit of her stomach. Biological, _visceral_ , sex layered onto hunger layered onto nausea, and Yasha grits her teeth against the unpleasant sensory overload. It’s too much all at once, too much sensation, and for an odd moment she wishes for the rage that sends her into a blank, distant battle trance.

For Yasha, the Stormlord’s rage is almost a reprieve. An escape from the uncertainty of her own mind, allowing her to flee her traitorous body that taunts her with its wants, its needs and desires. When Yasha fights with the Stormlord’s blessing, she becomes a shining instrument of violence, a weapon, wielded by a being more powerful and far wiser than her. It’s a gift, to be used for a glorious purpose, even if she doesn’t yet fully understand that purpose.

“Come on,” Jester says with a small smile, jerking Yasha out of her trance, and Yasha nods wordlessly. “We must be getting closer to the end, right?”

It’s more horror the deeper they go, more dread and unease, more whispering among themselves that this is a terrible idea, what are they _doing_ here, they’re walking into a trap set by forces they can’t even comprehend. They harvest glowing hearts from the undead and fight their own mirrored reflections and creep across a bridge in breathless silence. Yasha watches as Nott dives off the edge, grabbing uselessly for empty air a half second too late, and when Jester follows her over into the abyss she nearly jumps down herself, desperate to save them from whatever part of her past has led them here.

_It’s too much,_ she wants to tell them. _You don’t have to do this, I can figure out the answers on my own._

But she doesn’t. Not even when they’re resting after the bridge, when something starts pulsing heavy and deep in the back of her head like the beating of a drum, when they’re steps away from the center of the temple. She opens her mouth to speak, to beg them to leave her behind, to save themselves from this _thing_ that’s pulling her in, but...she can’t.

_Can’t?_ No, Yasha thinks, ashamed and disgusted with herself, with her own weakness. _Won’t._

_Won’t?_

The words are hooked somewhere down her throat, the oppressive quiet of the temple suppressing any warning, any plea, and it takes all her effort to refuse Caleb’s offer of more protection, more help from the group of people she fears she may, despite all her good intentions, already love; being loved by her hasn’t turned out too well for anyone.

(Zualla’s dark hair cascading down her back, the flare of Molly’s sharp-edged grin — to love is to bury, when you have nothing else to give)

_Whatever’s calling me here won’t have them too. Not if I still draw breath._

She told them to kill her, if it ever comes to that. Trusts Caleb out of all of them to do what needs to be done, to make the hard choices for the greater good. He understands, she thinks, Nott’s blurted out comment about what he’d done to his family still echoing in her head. Sometimes the darkness inside you is too poisonous, the roots wrapped tight around your heart, your lungs, your bones.

Sometimes there’s not enough of you left to save.

\----------

Obann doesn’t take long to reveal himself. They’d barely done a sweep of the room before he appears, taunting her with references to all she’d done, to a life she can’t remember.

“Why are you here, though? Why did you come?” Obann asks, and Yasha swallows hard.

Beau tosses off some witticism, and Fjord gives a convincing bluff, but the truth is, they’re only here for her. One mention of her name, and they tore off across a continent to follow the lead. There were reasons, justifications about the Bright Queen and studying portals and currying political favor, but none of them would be here now if not for her.

_I should have come alone. I should never have brought them here. They shouldn’t...they shouldn’t be here. This is a bad place for them._

But there are answers here, with him, she can _feel_ it, even if she has to rip him apart with her bare hands to get them. Even if what she discovers is somehow worse than she imagined, even if she’s never able to fully lay down her burdens, even if she has to face the consequences of her own failure and weakness, at least then she’ll finally know.

Because whatever the weight of her crimes, she can’t move forward until she understands the landscape of where she’s been, the shape of what she did. Of why she dreams of lightning and blood and the ashes of the fallen. On the other side of her missing memories are Nott and Caduceus, Caleb and Beau, the family that Jester had offered so simply and sweetly it had nearly broken her heart, and the only way out is _through._

Obann starts to read, and it’s...it’s familiar… His words flit on the edge of her mind, too swift and faint for her to grasp, and then everything moves very, very quickly. Jester growls in frustration as her spell fails, Nott too, and then Oban is too high and far for her to reach. Fjord summons a demon and Beau leaps into the air, Caduceus whispering a prayer to the Wildmother to guide and protect them.

When the Laughing Hand rises, lumbering out of a sarcophagus to the sound of Obann’s voice, Yasha throat goes tight and strange. Tightening her grip on Skingorger, she bites her tongue hard enough to draw blood, fighting back a strange, bizarre urge to...laugh. A burst of wild, unhinged joy fills her body, filling her to the brim as if she were an empty vessel, completely separate from her own emotions. Yasha shudders, unnerved and a tiny bit afraid that anything could be powerful enough to pierce through the misty haze of her battle-rage.

_No. No, no, no._

Yasha spits blood and runs forward and promises herself death once more, heedless of the shadow hounds that snap at her heels. Carves into the hulking creature, snarling as her blade slashes into his body, and when the wounds turn to teeth-filled mouths shrieking with laughter she’s somehow half-expecting it, her mind braced for the onslaught. She shakes off the piercing sounds, attacks again, and sees Fjord and Caleb gesturing her over toward the door.

_Running. We’re running_ , she thinks, and something in her howls in protest. Hesitates for just a moment — _I need to stay, I must not leave_ — before wrenching herself away and sprinting toward the entrance of the tomb.

She barely sees it, when Obann falls. Bleeding, broken, he starts to take to the air only for Fjord to slash out with his blade (the shadow-blade, born from a hungry creature locked away in the sea half a world away, the great glowing eye beneath the waves; Fjord has answers of his own to seek, in time). A flare of pain, of regret — she might never know, now — but she’s still moving purposefully toward her family when he calls out to her.

“Avenge me,” Obann says, a scrape of sound against her skull like a knife across leather. His face is twisted in pain, one wing torn so badly it can barely move, his eyes as black as tar.

“Never,” she starts to say, but her voice comes out a thick, strangled whisper.

Her mouth forms the word, her heart pounding hard against her ribs as she declares her allegiance to her new family, but as Obann meets her gaze something flares in her mind, hot and sharp and hard as a manacle. She chokes on it, the speaking and not-speaking, until her denial of him dissolves on her tongue.

The laughter, the darkness, the burn of hellfire and the tang of old iron — it’s a homecoming.

Rage washes over her, crimson and ferocious and feral, completely different from the Stormlord’s gift. Yasha gasps into it, squeezing her eyes shut and nearly doubling over from the intensity. It scorches across her skin, igniting her blood from within, and it feels...it feels... _good._

It feels right, it feels _perfect_ , a sword in her hand and blood on her lips and Obann at her side. Fighting to release the children of the Angel of Iron, destroying all who cross her path, repaying the debt she owes in the wails of the fallen. Yasha stifles a scream, struggling to resist the tide of fire licking up her skin, but she can’t, she can’t, she can’t. She’s not strong enough to resist.

The tether snaps, the chains shatter, and she plummets down toward something deep and fathomless, toward the sounds of crawling, toward a wide-open mouth with endless rows of teeth. Everything around her fades away, Oban’s whisper pulling her down like an anchor wrapped around her ankles, and even the memory of Zualla’s voice in her ear can’t slow her descent. Not Jester’s hand on her shoulder, not Beau’s beautiful smile in the afternoon sunlight, not Fjord’s steady presence at her back or Caleb’s eyes dark with understanding; she wants to cry out, wants to reach for them, but it’s not _enough._

It’s never enough to stop her fall.

\----------

Orphanmaker opens her eyes once again, breathes in deep, and grins.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m also on [tumblr](https://tinwomanrunaway.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/Tinwomanrunaway), ugly-crying over this episode and saying very little of value


End file.
